Opinion | Features

In this guest post, Nick Fawbert highlights what YouTube’s rules for branded content mean for advertisers and multi-channel networks.
There was something of an inevitability about last week’s dismay over YouTube’s ‘clarification’ on the fees payable for branded content on YouTube’s channels. No commercially viable major platform is likely to offer free access to valuable audiences in perpetuity.

In this guest post, Anthony Freedman argues that media agencies will find it harder than they think to shift into public relations territory because it requires an entirely different culture.
Like a lot of people, I noticed the coverage surrounding Mat Baxter’s reveal of UM’s new “Creative Connections Agency” positioning last week.
It started with a piece in Mumbrella provocatively headlined “Media agencies aren’t our competitors” and continued the following day after Mat was goaded into stating UM “won’t be entering media agency awards any more”.
For anyone who didn’t read the stories, the gist of it is this; UM is no longer a media agency, it’s a ‘connections company’ that is embracing earned and owned media, and thus will herein compete with the likes of R/GA, Google and (closest to my heart) One Green Bean.

Amid the ongoing hype around content marketing Mark Yeow argues agencies and clients are getting too bogged down in the detail and need to look at content more broadly.
Our industry’s fixation on content marketing is keeping us from seeing the bigger picture.
The power of content extends far beyond lead generation, conversion, and other measures of marketing ROI. It is, perhaps the critical ingredient of any brand – essential to the vision of any discipline involved in creativity or communication, and indicative of their healthiness and longevity.

Streaming services have been getting a lot of headlines of late. OMD's Jeremy Gavin looks at what impact such services will have on evolving the television as a medium.
The Netflix beast is a product of its environment.

A curious mind is a prerequisite for being a creative. So why don't more youngsters entering the creative world ask questions asks Will Clark.
As a junior creative one of the most powerful creative tools is already at your disposal. Curiosity can be a crucial tool when starting work in an industry you know very little about. After my first few years in advertising I have come to realise the full potential of being a curious creative.
Fresh out of design college and AWARD school, I was ready to get stuck into the world of real briefs, real clients and real award potential. However I quickly discovered that the world of advertising is vastly different to the picture that we often paint in our minds before getting there.

Following the expose of blooding and other practices in greyhound racing last week Damian Madden looks at what the sport needs to do to regain public trust.
As an animal lover, and somebody who has been to the dog track occasionally, I was abhorred when I saw the Four Corner’s footage earlier this week of greyhound trainers ‘blooding’ their dogs using live animals.
Watching the fallout in the days that followed I began to wonder if greyhound racing could recover from this catastrophic blow. Has its brand been damaged beyond repair?

Today David Thodey announced he is retiring as CEO of Telstra after five years in the role. Richard Curtis who worked with the telco during his time with Interbrand, explains Thodey's role in rebuilding one of Australia's biggest brands.
Two experiences bookend recollections of my time working with Telstra, over a seven-year period in which I worked with three different marketing teams.
“Didn’t we do the brand last year?” was how one Telstra executive put it, somewhat taken aback by the idea that the Telstra brand might evolve, let alone have implications for his own business unit’s activities.

After predicting the winner of the Best Picture Oscar two years in a row using data Bryan Melmed puts his reputation on the line for a third time.

Our audience data and insights accurately predicted the best picture Oscar winner in 2013 and 2014. So it is possibly foolhardy to put our neck on the line again but as the saying goes, go hard or go home so I’m here to tell you that Birdman will win. Or at least this is what the data suggests. And here is why.

D&AD CEO Tim Lindsay argues scam is a disease and doing work to just win awards is worth nothing.
You would expect us to say this, but it has been an exciting year at D&AD. With the help of the Glue Society, Google and others we’ve brought New Blood to Australian shores for the first time, launched our new NowCreate programme and forged new partnerships with creative organisations around the world – such as AWARD - to enable us to better support the global creative community. It has been a good year.
However, as much as we’d like to focus on all the positives about our wonderful business, it’s important we don’t stick our head in the sand and ignore the more difficult stuff.

UM is shifting its focus from being the Big Boutique to the Creative Connections Agency. CEO Mat Baxter and chief strategy officer Sophie Price sat down with Nic Christensen to explain why the new positioning is more than just semantic, how it has torn up its remuneration model and why the traditional media agency focus on paid media is broken.
Say what you want about Mat Baxter, the iconoclastic CEO of UM knows how to generate a headline.

Navigating celebrity ambassador agreements can be difficult, with several high profile agreements ending badly in recent years. Here Stephen von Muenster and his team give some tips on what to look out for when drafting the legal terms.
Personalities who become brand ambassadors can be a powerful marketing tool for brands. From celebrities to social media influencers, they have the potential to make brands and products relatable and accessible, increasing exposure and successfully driving sales.
Unfortunately for brands, their fairytale relationship with an ambassador doesn’t always end happily ever after.

Brands are increasingly cashing in on the popularity of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in an attempt to lure the pink dollar with the likes of ANZ's GAYTMs leading the charge, writes Robert Burton-Bradley.

Listicles, quizzes and cat videos might be the flavour of the moment for content marketing, but it's only through in-depth long form content brands can really engage customers argues Atomic 212's Richard Quinn.
In today’s time-starved world, people just don’t have time to read longer content items. Give them short, quick snippets which can be quickly digested, like snacks on the run.
Or so you think.
In truth there is substantial evidence pointing to the contrary, which could have significant implications for your content marketing strategy.

Recently Prime Minister Tony Abbott was criticised for not being a good enough salesman for his policies. Here Elliot Epstein looks at how politicians could improve their sales technique to their electorate.
Law, Unions, Engineering, Journalism, Small Business, Academia and Agriculture have all delivered people to politics.
But the world of high stakes senior sales professionals, steeped in the art and science of winning complex, competitive multi-million dollar deals has not regularly supplied our parliaments with its exquisitely skilled members.

Mi9 boss takes aim at rivals over online catch-up strategy

Mark Britt, the CEO of Nine Entertainment’s digital arm Mi9, has taken aim at his rivals declaring they have been too “hesitant” to seed new programming online and declaring the Australian TV industry will never have a single Hulu-like catch-up service.

He told Mumbrella Nine’s catch-up app had now reached more than 670,000 downloads while the Jump-in website, which relaunched in November, has had 5.7m unique browsers.

“You build community around great shows well before and well after they go to air. I think they (Ten and Seven) are too hesitant and I think they are missing the opportunity,” Britt told Mumbrella.

Mark Britt

The digital boss said the network which lagged behind some of its rivals in catch-up, before relaunching Jump-in last year, was now firmly competitive in the space and was using online to seed content and build buzz around programs such as Love Child and The Block.

What is driving our growth is extent of content on the service — for example, The Block which just ended had 3.5m streams for the series which is a new record for an Australian catch up series,” said Britt.

“You need to engage with the fanatics around shows. The whole focus used to be on the water cooler but what we are now seeing is the fanatics are driving the buzz around a show and then the energy that sustains it across the series.

“If you look at Love Child we released it to the web before free to air and made the first four episodes available to the first 20,000 viewers. It then launched to 1.4m viewers on the back of phenomenal social media buzz and in addition we have had 1.1m streams of episodes as well.”

“There has been a debate about an industry app but we don’t think that a broad generic industry app makes sense for this space,” said Britt.

The position stands in contrast to Ten’s chief digital officer Rebekah Horne who last year told Mumbrella: “It would make sense for that to take place… the key thing for them to figure out is the key to the broadcast business and the best technology distribution mechanism.”

Britt said that any cooperation in the social TV or catch up space would have to be built on third party technology and lead to a poorer outcome for consumers. “This space is too important to rely on a generic third party application,” he said.

“One example of that is we launched 16 camera angles for the State of Origin last year, we did that on Jump-in, the web and mobile for the Anzac Day test.

“Those things are only possible when you’ve gone and made a level of investment in proprietary technology.”

“The same thing is true for advertising that the level of depth of integration we want to provide for people across TV, desktop and mobile is only possible in a proprietary environment. You can’t deliver the sort of advertising outcomes on generic third party experiences.”

Britt also acknowledged the ongoing frustration of media buyers about the lack of inventory and calls for the networks to increase the number of ads in their catch up services.

He said:”For catch up video the density of advertising is lighter than TV but we think works for user experience. We will keep on testing the right level of density.

“We will have a model that is ultimately driven by consumer feedback and get the right balance with the right model for the business and the right consumer experience.

“The big thing for Jump-in is to bring together everything that is engaging about digital television into one place — social TV and catch up into one place on an advertising supported basis.”

A spokesman for Network Ten said in response to Britt’s remarks: “Mark Britt should spend less time focussing on his rivals and more time finding a way to salvage Jump In, which has been a spectacular failure.”

A spokesman for Seven declined to comment on Britt’s remarks.

Rival networks Ten’s catch up app Ten Play, has had 500,000 downloads, while its social app Zeebox has not released its download numbers. Seven’s social app Fango, according to the network has 995,000 downloads while its catch up app Plus7 has had 900,000 downloads.

Comments

I love the comment from Ten. Jump-in has been a “spectacular failure” yet it has 170,000 more downloads than Ten’s app. Hahahahaha

Lionel
14 Apr 14
8:37 am

and in their awesome insightful strategy

they are getting their Jump In App for Android……

when ? almost 2 years and no sign

Credible
14 Apr 14
9:58 am

Ten is certainly qualified to talk about spectacular failures …

Minnie
14 Apr 14
10:44 am

App downloads are all well and good, but what really counts is to what extent people are actually using the apps once they have downloaded them and specifically, how much video they’re watching via these apps. The numbers we should be getting from the networks are number of video streams/month, or better still, total hours of video viewed per month (since a stream can be 1m long or an hour plus long). If digital video is going as well as Mark Britt and others maintain! network chiefs should have no problem releasing these numbers.

Stan the man
14 Apr 14
11:05 am

Good call Minnie. Mumbrella, why don’t you ask the networks to supply this information. It’d provide a lot more insight into how people are/aren’t using catchup TV services than app downloads, which don’t really mean much.

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